Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ)

The Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ) is one of 51 Jeep models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1998. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ) properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Lexus Lexus IS, the Peugeot Peugeot 206, the Audi AG Audi TT — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ) reads like this: the record lists its engine as 4.0 L AMC 242 I6 / 4.7 L Chrysler PowerTech V8 / 4.7 L Chrysler PowerTech HO V8 / 3.1 L VM Motori 531 OHV TD I5 / 2.7 L Mercedes-Benz OM612 Turbo CRD I5 / ; kerb weight is recorded at Laredo 2WD (4.0) 3786 lb / Laredo 2WD (4.7) 3863 lb / Limited 2WD (4.0) 3895 lb / Limited 2WD (4.7) 3964 lb / Limited 2WD (4.7 H.O.) 3999 lb / Laredo 4WD (4.0) 3970 lb / Laredo 4WD; drive goes through 4-speed 42RE automatic / 4-speed 45RFE automatic / 5-speed 545RFE automatic; the layout is Front-engine, rear-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Jeep story

Within Jeep's own catalogue the Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ) sits alongside the Jeep Wrangler (JK), the Jeep Wrangler (TJ), the Jeep Gladiator (2005), the Jeep Wrangler (JL). The record names the Grand Cherokee ZJ as its predecessor and the Grand Cherokee WK / Jeep Commander (XK) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Tom Gale, Brandon Faroute (1995). Assembly is recorded at Detroit, Michigan, United States (JNAP) / Graz, Austria (Magna Steyr) / Córdoba, Argentina / Valencia, Venezuela (Carabobo Assembly) / Beijing, China (Beijing Jeep).

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

From catalogue to ownership

What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ) costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.